Behind a Rosewood Door
by TheWheelWeaves
Summary: A series of PG-13 and above one-shots taking place in the This Rose is Extra series, a crossover between Doctor Who and BBC's Sherlock.
1. Constellations

**Look, everyone, another story! This is mostly to make up for missing last week's update.**

**Okay, a little bit of background on this collection. Back around chapter 17 of ****_Holmes and Tyler are Dead_****, Elensari from Teaspoon recommended that I put together a series of one-shots that were sexy, smutty, and hot and call them "Behind a Rosewood Door" from a line in that chapter. I thought that was a brilliant idea, and so here we have it.**

**This installment is PG-13 at best and was referenced in chapter 3 of ****_Holmes and Tyler are Dead_****. It takes place sometime after The Talk and sometime before Stars Will Fall. It also references the story that I published today titled ****_Starlight_****. I know some of you don't read my non-crossover pieces, but I totally recommend it in this one instance.**

**Finally, a bit of advertising: as ever, I am looking for prompts. ****_I am a Ridiculous Man_**** is not dead, I have a story that will probably be published over there next week, but if you've had an idea for a sexy sort of a prompt, but weren't sure how to suggest it, now is very much the time to do so! That offer holds true going forward as well. Please feel free to prompt me with anything of any rating!**

**So anyway, I hope you all enjoy your Fanfiction Friday, and ****_Constellations_****.**

* * *

"I need the apartment tonight, Sherlock."

Sherlock glanced up from the paper on which he had been working out the chemical composition of a poison that had proven shockingly popular among a small band of "freedom fighters" (terrorists, as Mycroft preferred) from Southern Moldova. They had taken the idea from the "anthrax mailings" in America, but had learned from the trick- painting the poison that could be absorbed through the skin into the fibres of the paper itself. Fortunately, skin contact at the fingertips was not the most lethal way for the poison to enter the system, so the three clerks from the ministers' offices were not dead, merely ill. Sherlock was looking for an antidote that might work a bit more quickly than the regiment of fluids and observation that the hospital was using to that point.

He was also, in another part of his vast brain, considering the fact that Mycroft was likely to send him to Moldova to deal with the cell, and he would need something in case he accidentally poisoned himself while he was there. He'd need to tell Rose, but he would avoid mentioning the poison, and the possibility of death. That would only needlessly worry her.

In and around all of this was John's assertion that he would need their flat tonight.

"I don't believe it's going anywhere."

John shook his head, exasperated. "No, I've got a date tonight."

Sherlock blinked once, now completely lost. "All… right. And you need the flat because…?"

John sighed again. "Honestly, Sherlock. Are you a bloody space alien?"

He took in John's look of frustration and managed to piece together something that made some sense. "You're going to bring her back here at the end of the night? If you need, I can be in my room or gone by ten."

John seemed surprised that Sherlock had managed to piece together that much as quickly as he had. "I really need the whole place- I promised I'd cook for her."

"Here?"

Both men glanced around the kitchen with its small chemical laboratory set up on one section of the counter and three large pots that had been used for some un-remembered experiment piled into the sink, still unwashed. Sherlock's papers were spread across the table, and the sitting room was as cluttered and chaotic as ever.

The two men's eyes met, and John had to concede Sherlock's point.

"She asked to come here. Apparently she's curious about where I live."

"Might scare her off."

"I'll have to clean," John said after another glance around the kitchen. "Are there any cadaver pieces in the fridge? That'd definitely scare her off."

"Not today," Sherlock said, returning his attention to his paper. "Might get another head tomorrow or the next day. Depends on when Molly is done with it."

"Small mercies," John muttered. "Right then, I need you to clear out until tomorrow morning, or else you have to help clean up."

"Not my date, John."

"Thought not." Though he'd never admit it, John was slightly jealous of the fact that Rose seemed un-perturbed by the bachelor's disaster that was their flat. She would just laugh and say that she'd seen worse, and she had an impressive knack for getting Sherlock to help with the washing up that John didn't seem to have learned yet. He supposed that being pretty, blonde, and with a smile that could fuzz even the cleverest of minds might have had something to do with it.

"Which one is this?" Sherlock asked as John got to work on the pots in the sink.

"Liz. I don't think you've formally met her but…"

"Divorced? Has a cat and a vegetable garden?"

"Yeah," John said, surprised that Sherlock remembered that much. He thought the pair of them had only passed a few moments on the front steps of 221 one day as he'd run up to grab his coat and Sherlock had arrived home. Then again, Sherlock had always been able to pluck personal histories from the air.

"She talks too much."

"Right," John said, rolling his eyes and setting the first pot on the draining board. "And you don't know anything about having a girlfriend who talks too much."

Sherlock ignored this, and the kitchen was quiet for several minutes save for the swish of water in the sink and the scratch of Sherlock's pencil across his paper.

John finished scrubbing, drying, and putting the dishes away. He dismantled Sherlock's laboratory and put it into the cabinet that was designated for it (by Rose, naturally). He wiped the counters and peeked into the fridge to find it nearly empty. Rose had convinced their landlady to stop doing their grocery shopping, informing the pair of men that they were adults and were not allowed to replace their mothers with Mrs. Hudson, and so take advantage of her. If they wanted to eat, they would have to go to the store for themselves.

John winced at the thought. He still needed to do the hoovering, and he couldn't recall if he'd changed his sheets, and somehow he had to get Sherlock out of the house, and he had to decide what he would make for Liz and buy the ingredients and make it, and all in just under three hours.

He then had an idea that he thought might assist with at least half of the things on his list. He pulled out his mobile and selected a number from his speed dial. After only a moment of waiting, he was greeted by a voice that never failed to make him smile.

"You're going to be very disappointed in me," he said, after exchanging greetings, "but I need a favour."

~?~?~?~?~

Rose was pleased to see John's name pop up on her phone's readout. Had it been a text, it would have been a 50/50 chance that it was Sherlock rather than the phone's owner simply because one device was closer than the other. Sherlock was not terribly conscious of other people's property or privacy and had even adjusted the speed dial selections in John's phone so that she, Mycroft, Lestrade, and Molly were all in the same positions that they held in Sherlock's own phone. She'd tried to defend John when this had come out, but John had shrugged and said that it didn't much matter to him and Rose had left it from there.

Were it a text, it might have been the legendary detective, but that man never _spoke_ on the phone, so she knew, when she picked up the call, that she would be speaking to the blogging doctor.

"Hullo, John! How are you?"

"I'm good, thanks. How are you?"

"I'm fantastic. Do you need something?"

John let out a heavy sigh that echoed over the line. "You're going to be very disappointed in me, but I need a favour."

Rose frowned at this, but as John explained what he needed from her, that frown was replaced by a wry smile.

"Right, well, you've left it a bit late to do anything too terribly impressive, haven't you?"

"Er… well…"

"No worries. I've an idea that will look impressive but be pretty simple."

"And you'll…"

"Yes, I'll go grocery shopping for you, and get Sherlock off your hands tonight. Do you need me to pick up wine as well?"

"Please. You are a lifesaver."

"Just call me the Defender of the Earth."

~?~?~?~?~

Sherlock glanced up from his work to see that his flat was unusually clean, the kitchen smelled of Italian food and his girlfriend was humming quietly to herself while chopping vegetables at the counter.

"When did you get here?"

Rose glanced at her watch. "About an hour ago. I said hello."

"I was…"

"Preoccupied. A girl could get a complex, you know."

Sherlock ignored this in favour of looking about the kitchen to determine what he had missed as the world fell away and he'd surrounded himself with the precision of chemical equations.

The kitchen was spotless save for the area on the table that he had spread his work. His laboratory equipment was off the counter and Sherlock rose to check that it was all put away properly. It was, of course. It had been John who had put it away- had it been Sherlock, it would have been a chaotic jumble that would have frustrated him to no end when he tried to use it again. John tended to respect Sherlock's tools more than the man himself did.

Sherlock then peeked into his rarely-used oven and saw a dish that smelled of tomatoes and garlic that he identified as lasagne. He noted a bottle of infused olive oil, a bottle of red wine, a loaf of bread from an Italian bakery near Rose's flat, and Rose herself continuing to calmly chop cucumber into a bowl that already held a variety of colourful vegetables.

"You made dinner?" Sherlock hazarded.

"Nope, John did. I'm just helping out while he gets his sheets out of the dryer."

Sherlock frowned for a moment before he remembered. His conversation with John earlier in the day had been pushed to the side as he had continued to work, and it now seemed like it had been days rather than hours since he had been told he would need to get out of John's way for a date.

"Since you're back in the land of the living, clear your stuff off the table and get ready to come to my place."

"I'm busy." It was more a _pro forma_ statement than anything. Sherlock had enough pattern-recognition to realize that when Rose told him to go (particularly if it meant a night spent at her flat) he would go. It was merely part of the process to complain.

"And you can be busy again at my kitchen table, but you're not ruining this date for John."

"I wouldn't ruin it!" Sherlock objected, even as he began to clear his papers into a folio to take to hers.

"Sure you wouldn't. I can see it now. John brings his lovely lady back here. 'Welcome to my flat,' he says. 'This is where I live; please ignore the gargoyle sitting at the table glowering at us while we attempt to eat, that's just my flatmate. Would you like some wine?'"

"There is no need to be facetious."

"Oh, but there is. Now, I expect you ready to leave by the time John gets back downstairs. Go!"

Sherlock grumbled the whole way, making disparaging comments about his best friend, his friend's date, and his own girlfriend as he did, but Rose was not fooled. She knew it was part of how he saved face- he liked his mask of uncaring indifference and hid behind it when another person might have been gracious or pleased. Rose smiled and rolled her eyes at his back. Emotionally stunted men tended to be her specialty.

When Sherlock returned, the things that he would need in an overnight kit, Rose was still in the kitchen giving John some last-minute instructions.

"Don't dress the salad until about 5 minutes before you're going to serve it, and pull the cake out of fridge when you start eating so it isn't cold and hard when you get to the end. I got you a red and a white wine, either one will go fine with the food, so ask her which one she prefers and drink the same one so she doesn't feel like you're judging her choice, right? And if she doesn't want wine, you shouldn't drink it either."

John nodded, earnestly, and they both turned to see Sherlock enter the room.

"Right then, that's good. You have a good time, John, and don't do anything I wouldn't do."

John nodded again, then stopped and frowned. "What don't you do?"

Rose grinned and shrugged. "I'm sure I could think of something…" she said and sent a cheeky wink over her shoulder at Sherlock who, to his own horror, felt himself blush. He knew what she didn't do… or at least what she didn't- _hadn't_- done with him. Not yet, anyway.

"All right then, good luck," Rose said and, with a swift kiss on the cheek for John, she grabbed Sherlock's hand and pulled him toward the sitting room and his coat. She dropped his hand long enough for him to pull on coat and scarf, then grabbed it again and pulled him down the steps and onto the cool London streets.

Despite the chill and damp in the air, Rose made no move to hail a cab and Sherlock found himself enjoying the walk in the fading light of the city. They didn't talk much, just moved together through the people and air that made London's pulse. Sherlock kept his eyes on the movements- the homeless huddled on street corners, the CCTV cameras behind which his brother might sit, the cabs and cars inside of which anyone or anything might lurk- he felt no fear, however. London was his hunting ground, and he was the king of the forest.

His eyes flicked to the woman at his side, and he had to fight back the smile that wanted to play over his mouth. She too took in the city with an all-seeing eye, checking for danger down dark alleys and sizing up the people that they passed in a single glance.

It is a misnomer to call the lion the "king of the jungle." He is a plains cat, the jungle is the realm of the dappled cats- leopards, tigers, and sleek, shadowy panthers. On this continent, however, there aren't many cats, and the realm of the forest is ruled by the wolf.

Sherlock was pleased with the thought. He'd always considered himself a cat- more solitary, more independent- but things were changing. It had started with John getting between the very few, very tiny cracks in his armour and finding a place for himself in the heart that Sherlock could have sworn that he did not have. Then it had been Rose, who had not been content to curl up in the space that was already there, but had, instead, begun to push and expand that heart, forcing him to encompass all that she was and all that she meant.

It had involved allowing people close, not just John and Rose, but other people too- John's girlfriends, and Rose's friends and coworkers, and Sherlock had found himself with a pack without even realizing it.

A tug on his hand and Sherlock found himself inside of a brightly-lit, salt-and-grease scented space that was too warm after the chill of the outdoors. Rose nodded over to an empty table in a corner that would allow both of them to sit with their backs to a wall and give them an unobstructed view of the other patrons and the front door. She knew him well. He nodded and left her to claim the table as she approached the counter with a wide grin to purchase chips.

After only a few moments, Rose had placed a basket of chips in front of him and settled into the seat beside him with her own basket in front of her.

"What're you smirking about?" she asked, reaching around him for the bottle of vinegar.

Sherlock was surprised. Surely he hadn't been… but no. As Rose mentioned it, he could feel his lips twisted into a small smile without his conscious knowledge.

"Nothing," he said, picking up a chip and examining it in lieu of meeting her eyes. "Just nice to be out in the fresh air."

Rose snorted derisively. "Real fresh. Air in London always tastes of exhaust and rain. It's the same in any universe."

"I love it."

Rose smiled. "Yeah. Me too."

~?~?~?~?~

Sherlock's thumb stroked idly on the skin of Rose's stomach underneath her t-shirt, where his hand had, almost of its own volition, wandered in the past hour. He'd tried to settle back into his work once they had arrived at Rose's but after discovering one error that highlighted half a dozen more and getting so frustrated that he nearly threw one of her teacups against the wall she had appeared at his side, brushing her cool fingers across the back of his neck and calming him instantly.

"Come on," she said, taking his hand and pulling him, unresisting, up and into her sitting room. "Stop thinking about it for a few minutes and then come back. It'll help, I promise."

And so Sherlock had found himself sitting on her sofa watching some police drama starring the Scottish actor that she liked- the one Mickey said looked like the Doctor. It's the third episode, and he hadn't watched the first two, and he wondered if the story would make more sense if he had. He had the killer pegged, however, and tried to tell Rose, but she'd told him to shut it because she wanted to see what happened.

Sometime over the course of the show, they had gone from sitting up with Rose leaning against his side, to laying down, Rose spooned to Sherlock's front and his hand on the smooth skin of her stomach. He'd felt her fall asleep- her breaths and heartbeats growing slower, her muscles twitching involuntarily until, with a last, deep sigh, she stilled and Sherlock could tell that she had dropped off the edge and into the oceans of sleep. There was another quarter hour left of the episode, and he knew that she wanted to watch it, but he couldn't bring himself to wake her. He was enjoying the warm weight of sweet-scented girl in his arms too much to risk it.

There was a time when the sort of frustration he'd felt as he'd worked that evening would have had his hands shaking in desire for a cigarette or a needle. On this night, however, his hands shook with a different desire- the heady smell of her shampoo, her perfume, and her skin wrapped around Sherlock's brain and made him want to bury his frustration in the taste of her salt-sweat, the sound of her gasps, and the heat of her...

But he could not. He'd promised. Not until they were ready, and despite his body telling him in no uncertain terms that he was completely ready, in his mind there was a chorus of disagreement with his body's vehement reaction.

John's wisdom told him that his heart was not prepared.

Mickey's protectiveness told him that he couldn't hurt her.

His father's sensibility told him that he was perfectly happy to have her asleep and safe in his arms.

Sherlock tried to force his mind away from his body's responses and onto anything that would cool his ardour. His hand on her stomach, however, the heat there and the sweet velvet of the tiny hairs on her skin under the relatively un-callused skin of his right hand continued to draw his attention. He thought to remove his hand from under her shirt, but he didn't want to wake her.

_The Mycroft in his mind shook his head and rolled his eyes. She was deeply enough asleep and had been for long enough that he knew that little but a concerted effort would wake her now._

Sherlock's mind was drawn again to the skin under his hand- the delicate porous skin that kept his girl safe and well and whole, but could betray her with the barest prick of a knife or the right poison on the right paper. Sherlock's mind drew up a picture of the ivory-pale skin that was under his hand, spinning closer and closer until he was seeing it as though under a microscope. He could see each cell defined and the spaces between like doors standing open to the dangers.

Suddenly, it was as though the image stopped, and he could see what he hadn't before. He saw precisely what he had missed in his prior calculations. It was all laid out before him, and he had to write it down before he lost it, but the weight of Rose on his arm and the warmth in his chest as she lay there kept him from leaping up and rushing to the table and his papers.

He could not bear to wake her, but his hands were already beginning to twitch in desire for a pen to note his findings. His eyes scanned the room as he berated himself for leaving his work, allowing himself to be distracted, and his own foolish sentimentality for being unwilling to wake Rose when his eyes lit on a felt-tip pen on the side-table behind his head.

Reaching up for it dislodged Rose slightly and Sherlock tensed, but she did not wake, merely grunted in her sleep and resettled herself with a sigh.

Sherlock knew that if he moved again to try to find paper on which to write, he would surely wake her so instead, without consultation from the sensible part of his mind that put brakes to some of his more logical-yet-idiotic ideas, he rucked up the hem of Rose's t-shirt to just under her breasts and began writing against the soft skin of her stomach- the skin which had inspired his brain-wave in the first place.

Four minutes and 25 equations later, he caught a sensitive area on her stomach and her muscles jumped, causing him to smudge a number. He brought his thumb to his mouth and brushed it across her skin, wiping away the still-wet ink. He did not notice the quick intake of breath at his action.

Another seven minutes, and Sherlock had it. The antidote was unlocked and scrawled across Rose's abdomen and he allowed himself a small smile as he blew across the words to dry the ink.

Only then did Rose, who had been awake for approximately 10 minutes, speak.

"What on earth are you doing?"

Sherlock met her eyes, surprised and caught-out, but not guilty in the slightest.

"I had a breakthrough in my theory, and I didn't want to wake you," he said as though this were the most obvious thing in the world to do.

"So you wrote on me because that would be less disturbing than getting up and leaving the room?"

"Obviously."

Rose rolled her eyes and shifted out of his arms. "I'm going to go get you a piece of paper so your brilliant theory doesn't disappear as soon as I have a bath, all right?" She left the room, shaking her head at the man who could sometimes be as foolish as her little brother.

Rose returned to the sitting room, where Sherlock remained reclined on the couch with a miniature notebook and a biro and tossed both at him. She then had a moment of indecision. She could simply ruck up her shirt again, as he had done, but she was feeling bold and a bit foolhardy and a bit frustrated as his touch still sang in her blood, so before she thought too hard about it, she stripped off her t-shirt and stood in her bra and jeans before him. She didn't lie down beside him again, however. No need to tempt that beast when the feel of his hands had already lit a fire in her veins that she was trying to force to cool with thoughts of her mother's glare, Mycroft's sarcasm, and Cassandra's sneering. Sherlock's eyes on her skin, however, kept her blood simmering no matter what she did.

"Write, Holmes," she said when it seemed that he would merely stare at her for the duration.

He blinked in surprise, but obediently turned his eyes to the notebook before him and Rose was able, finally, to calm her roughly-beating heart and consider her next move. Heated looks or no, Sherlock was far too calm for her liking, considering that she still had not managed to get her breathing regulated. Rose wanted to fluster him. She wanted her hands on him. She wanted him to want. She wanted so many things that she knew that they weren't yet ready for. Mostly, however, she wanted to see those icy eyes dark with want of her.

When Sherlock lifted his head from copying down his theories and equations and met Rose's shrewd eyes. He felt a thrum of want matched and amplified by a frisson of fear in his blood. She was looking at him as though he were a particularly succulent morsel and she was trying to decide whether to nibble and savour or gulp it down in a go.

Sherlock nearly groaned as that thought made some portions of his anatomy that he had been keeping on a tight rein until that point slip their fetters. He was grateful that the room was largely in shadow- hopefully Rose would not recognize his predicament.

"You know, it's rude to draw on someone while they are asleep," Rose said in a matter-of-fact tone.

"Oh?" Sherlock asked, and if his voice was nearly a perfect tonic fifth above its usual pitch, he was not going to mention it.

"Oh yes, and since you were rude, you should be… punished."

Sherlock's lungs forgot how to work at this last word. "Punished?" he gasped.

Rose smiled a feral smile. "Punished. Come here, Sherlock."

Somehow, he found that he could not deny her, though he had no idea what to expect. He rose and crossed the room to her, standing in front of her close enough to feel the heat coming off of her skin. He wanted to lay his hands on her waist and feel all that warm, alabaster satin under his fingers again, but he held himself back.

Rose could feel her hands shaking. She wasn't completely certain where she was going with this, all she knew was that she wanted her hands on him as his had been on her. She placed her palms against his abdomen, which stilled their trembling and she liked the way that Sherlock's breath caught when she did. She slid them up along the buttons on his shirt until her fingers just brushed the open collar. She could tell from the feel of the fabric and the warmth that she could feel that Sherlock was not wearing a vest under his shirt. Only the thin, finely-woven cotton stood between her fingers and his skin.

She flicked the top button from his shirt open and brushed her fingertips across the skin that was there revealed.

"Rose?"

"Shh," Rose hushed him. Sherlock's mouth shut with an audible click of teeth.

Rose slid her fingers down to the next button on his shirt which revealed more pale skin. At the third button, Rose idly thought how strange it was that a man with hair as dark as Sherlock's would have effectively no chest hair. Sherlock remained silent, but his breathing grew more laboured as she continued to the fourth and fifth buttons on his shirt. It was now open to his navel and she had touched nowhere but along the slim strip of emergent skin that was put on display by each subsequent button's release.

"Rose?" Sherlock squeaked out as she began pulling his shirt from the waistband of his trousers.

She ignored him as she worked the last two buttons on the bottom of his shirt, then dragged her fingernails back up the same two inch strip of skin until her hands reached his shoulders again. Once there, she pushed at the shirt, spreading it over Sherlock's chest and down his arms.

"Shirt off, my dear Sherlock."

"Rose," Sherlock began, even as he started fumbling with his cuffs, "what… what are we doing?" He would not stop her, he knew, but he could not suss her intentions.

Rose grinned and reached behind her to pull the felt-tip pen she'd slid into her back pocket out to show to him. "Punishment, Sherlock, should fit the crime, don't you think?"

She could see him working out what she meant, and revelled in the small smile that graced his attractively bowed lips.

"You're going to draw on me?" he asked, raising an eyebrow at her.

"Yep," she said, popping the ultimate consonant as she always did when she was being cheeky. "I, however, am not so rude as to do it while you sleep." She stepped forward and put herself in Sherlock's space again, brushing her hands across his chest. "You don't go to the gym," Rose said, vaguely as she continued gently brushing her hands over him.

"Lucky genes," Sherlock said, his voice strained. "And I eat well."

"Meaning you barely eat at all," Rose retorted, tripping her fingers down his ribs. She felt him shift slightly. "Ticklish?" she asked, tongue firmly in the corner of her mouth.

Sherlock growled and, rather than answering, dipped his head to kiss her.

They gasped in unison into each other's' mouths as the skin of their chests came in contact. This was new and not-quite-expected.

Sherlock raised his head and looked down at Rose. "This all right?" he asked. He hoped she wouldn't say 'no,' because the feel of her skin against his might be the most glorious thing that he had felt in three and a half decades of searching for a fix.

"Yeah." Rose's voice was breathy and shocked, but she grinned, and her eyes lit like Christmas lights. "More than." And with that, she leaned up and kissed him again.

Mouths worked against each other, and hands explored territory that had always been illicit before. Rose's fingertips traced the dips and hollows of Sherlock's abdomen, chest, and back. She found that a gentle brush of fingertips over his nipples, rather than more concerted attention, made Sherlock shudder. She discovered that a fingernail drawn across the skin just beneath the waistband of his trousers elicited a growl from the back of his throat that sent shivers up her own spine. She discovered a universe of warm, smooth skin that smelled of laundry detergent, peppermint soap, and man.

Sherlock's hands were not idle either. They moved over her skin, curious and slow; not as though they had any intent to inflame, more as though they were trying to map a new land, careful and observant as a cartographer. They found places that caused reactions and filed them away, only to move on. Rose almost wanted to stop those restless hands (extensions of his mind, she knew) and place them where they brought her pleasure and hold them still. She did not, however.

Finally, when she was breathless and nearly vibrating with want, Rose pulled away from Sherlock's mouth.

"Lie down," Rose said, once Sherlock's eyes had finally focussed on her face.

"I... excuse me?"

Rose held up the hand that still held the pen for him to see. "Your punishment? Remember? Lie down on your front."

Sherlock looked wary, but moved to the sofa to do as Rose said. Rose grinned as he continued to watch her with the air of a cat having been caught playing with a twist-tie. He was all suspicion, wariness, and desire to return to what he'd been doing before being interrupted.

Once he had settled, still looking at her warily, Rose crossed to him and straddled his hips, settling herself on the swell of his bum with her knees on either side of his ribs. She smoothed her hands over his back, enjoying the feel of all that warm, pale skin under her hands. She pushed into the tense muscles under the skin because he still seemed certain that she would do him some injury.

"Relax, Sherlock. I'm not going to hurt you. Honest."

She felt him deliberately loosen his shoulders, but his lower back stayed tight. She spent several minutes rubbing and massaging the muscles there until they loosened and he began to feel pliable and relaxed under her hands.

Rose sat back and looked at her new canvas. She hadn't given any thought to what it was that she would draw, only deciding that she wanted to on a whim. Now, with Sherlock laid in front of her, she wasn't sure what she wanted. She could write. She could write poetry in his skin, or secrets, or the entire script of _The Muppet Movie_ (the Doctor had made her watch it enough times). She could draw dragons or people or impossible landscapes. She had an entire universe of possibility.

She found four freckles, scattered across the otherwise un-marred skin of his back. She smiled thinking of the Doctor's freckles that covered his face like stars in the firmament, making constellations and galaxies that had haunted her dreams.

And then Rose knew. She started with a freckle that rode high on his left shoulder.

"Cassiopeia was Andromeda's mother. She claimed that Andromeda was more beautiful than the Nereids or Juno, and the goddesses called on Neptune because they were offended. He sent the Kraken to ravage the coast unless Cassiopeia and her husband sacrificed their daughter. Lucky for them, Perseus showed up and got rid of the beast by showing it the severed head of Medusa. Neptune still had his revenge, of a sort though. He put Cassiopeia in the heavens, on her throne, but in such a way that she spends half the night upside-down."

"Are you drawing constellations on my back?"

"You drew chemical equations on my stomach. At least there's something poetic about stars."

Sherlock subsided with a grumble, and Rose moved to the next freckle, which was low on Sherlock's left shoulder-blade.

"Orion the Hunter. Right now, there is a resort planet that orbits the middle star in his belt, have I ever told you that? The people there are a peaky purple colour, and look a bit like spiders or crabs. It's rude to make eye-contact."

The next freckle was right above his left buttock. "Ursa Minor, the little bear. In the United States they call in the Little Dipper instead. I can see that a bit better than a bear, honestly. The tail though, that's made up of Polaris, the North Star. Bit of a long tail for a bear, but I suppose I've never really met a bear, myself."

The last freckle was right in the centre of Sherlock's back, and Rose knew what she would draw there. Perhaps she had known it from the beginning. She drew without speaking this time, the nine stars that spiralled out from the centre, and remembered standing with the Doctor, back when he was all gruffness and prickles as he had shown it to her and confessed... had confessed something to her. Love, Rose thought, but also just how very important she had become to him in those months that they had spent together. Just how much she had changed him.

"What is that one you're drawing?" Sherlock's voice intruded on her reverie.

"It's a constellation you can't see from Earth. The centre star is our Polaris, and there are nine that spiral out from it. Some people call it the Labyrinth. But I know it as the Rose."

Sherlock remained silent, as Rose finished connecting the stars that she had drawn. She dragged her fingertips across the spiral in the centre of his back, not quite over his heart, but she could feel the beat as she rested her fingers there.

Without thought, she bent forward and began to trace her lips over the stars that she had drawn. She swirled her tongue over the freckle and the centre, then kissed each star that came after, nine in all. She then repeated the action on each of the other three star-clusters that she had drawn on Sherlock's back.

"Rose," Sherlock groaned. "Please."

She knew what he was asking. Not for her to stop, but for her to continue. To finally bring this play to its inevitable conclusion and put Sherlock out of his misery. She wanted to so desperately- wanted to lose herself in heat and movement and hormones and sex, but something held her back.

"_I love you."_

"_Quite right, too."_

Sarah Jane had told her that there were some things that were worth getting her heart broken over. She'd been talking about the universe- all of time and space. Not a shag on her sofa in her flat in London. Rose knew she couldn't do it.

And so, giving into her better judgement, and against the scream of her body and even her heart, Rose climbed off of Sherlock, retrieved his shirt from the floor where it had been left, and handed it to him.

"Are you sure?" he asked, reaching for it. His eyes were clear, but the dark pupils nearly subsumed that starry blue.

"Not at all, but you should put that on anyway." Rose bent down to fetch her own t-shirt, and pulled it over her head. When she reappeared from the neck of her shirt, Sherlock had shrugged back into his own and was buttoning it up.

"What now?" he asked.

Rose sighed. They couldn't stay in her flat. Not with the sexual tension like a fog around them both. She could send him away, but she'd promised John to keep him out. They could call on Mickey as a chaperone, but that seemed unfair to her oldest friend.

"Ice cream," Rose said, decisively. "You're going to take me out for ice cream, that's what now."

When Sherlock realized that he'd forgotten his wallet at her flat after they had ordered, Rose decided that she should have been able to see that one coming.


	2. Secrets

**A/N: This is an update that was a long time in coming. WhoLockGal requested that I write a sexy story based on the lyric from the Fiona Apple song ****_I Know_**** "And you can use my skin/To write secrets in."**

**This is a fairly mature story. Not entirely explicit, but NSFW for sexual content.**

**Further A/N at the end. Please enjoy.**

**This takes place during _Holmes and Tyler are Dead_, between chapters 24 and 32.**

* * *

Rose Tyler knew many things about Sherlock Holmes that he had never told her. He never spoke about his childhood unless she asked directly, but she knew that he would have been a brilliant, lonely child- alienating all but the most stubborn, as the man he grew into was. She saw it in the way that he grew quiet and contemplative as she introduced him to the London of her birth and found the places that she had spent her youth- the pub she had begun sneaking into at 16, the play-park where she had received her first kiss at 13, the public library behind which she and her friends hand snuck fags while skipping school at 15.

Those things with which he was comfortable, Sherlock spoke about endlessly. His own brilliance. Facts, figures, and theories. The stuff of the mind could start Sherlock on a rant that might never end, but the stuff of the heart silenced him.

Rose knew that Sherlock's relationship with his family was strained, but she knew that he loved them. He was a loyal man, and his mother and father, and even his difficult brother had his loyalty. He would die for them, but he was unable to sit down to dinner with any of them.

Rose knew that Sherlock was frightened of finding the Doctor. She knew that he thought he would lose her. She knew that he loved her.

Every night the pair of them retreated to the small bedroom in the barracks that UNIT had assigned the pair of them and without words Sherlock told her.

His hands would trail across her skin, scribing words that she could not read over the velvet smoothness until he elicited a gasp or moan from her and they would focus and write whole sonnets that set her nerves aflame. Lyric confessions of love that his lips would not repeat.

His hands were extensions of his mind- clever, controlled- and they covered every inch of her skin, confessing his love, his fears, his need, his desire. He could drive her to distraction and to madness with only his fingertips, and did so regularly.

His clever left hand, callused and rough, would find her clitoris and compose songs and psalms to her glory as his right took her nipple and manipulated it- a scientific treatise on the biology of attraction, the chemistry of desire and the physics of sex- until her breath hitched, then he would plunge two fingers into her and feel her shudder in his arms, carried away and carrying him away to a bliss that the scientist could not comprehend, the musician could not evoke, and the poet could not describe.

When her eyes opened and found his, he would find his way to her, positioning carefully and finding peace and completion in the warmth of her- he was home.

As he moved inside of her, he pressed his mouth to her throat and hot panting became confession. He told her in moving lips and thrusting hips of his fearful and lonely childhood. He told her of complicated relationships and uncomprehending love. He told her of fear- fear that he could not keep her, fear that he did not deserve her, fear that he would break her.

And then, as he felt her muscles contract around him again, as he felt her fly over the edge and caught her cry in his mouth, as he rushed to his own bliss, he told her that he loved her.

As they lay together afterwards, as Rose grew still and sleepy across his chest, Sherlock knew that the words had not been said, but he was sure that she knew. She was the repository for his secrets, and in so being, she kept him safe.

* * *

**A/N: I fear that this may be the last RoseLock update from me for a time. I am having some trouble with this series and am taking a break from it.**

**Never fear, however, I am actually writing and will continue updating weekly, just not the This Rose is Extra 'verse. WhoLockGal continually encourages me to return to writing it once I feel good about it again, and I do not anticipate a wait of more than a month or two.**

**I hope I can convince some or any of you to look in on the story that I anticipate beginning to publish next Friday, which will be a Nine x Rose AU of the movie/book Chocolat.**

**I am very sorry to disappoint those of you who are disappointed, and I understand if I have lost your loyalty, but I have to do what is healthiest for me as both a writer and a person, and stepping away is that thing for now. I do hope for your understanding.**

**To all of you who have read and reviewed and given me such love for so long, I thank you, and I hope that I continue to write things that you enjoy.**


End file.
